Pilots described being caught totally by surprise

[arozanski]

Pilots described being caught totally by surprise
Wayward plane's pilots described being caught totally by surprise after missing Minneapolis
ap
By Joan Lowy, Associated Press Writer , On Wednesday December 16, 2009, 10:46 am

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The pilots of the Northwest Airlines plane that overshot Minneapolis described to safety investigators being caught completely by surprise when a flight attendant called them to ask when the plane would be landing.

According to interviews and other documents released Wednesday by the National Transportation Safety Board, the captain of Flight 188 said he looked up from his laptop to discover there was no longer any flight information programmed into the Airbus A320's computer. He said his navigation system showed Duluth, Minnesota, off to his left and Eau Claire, Wisconsin, ahead on the right.

The plane carrying 144 passengers had been out of radio contact for 77 minutes as it flew across a broad swath of the country on Oct. 21, raising national security concerns.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Federal safety officials say they will release information gathered in their investigation of the Northwest Airlines plane that flew more than 100 miles past Minneapolis while pilots worked on their laptops.

The National Transportation Safety Board says it will make public on Wednesday about 400 pages of interviews with Flight 188's pilots and flight attendants, as well as air traffic controllers, among other information.

Since the board's investigation is continuing, investigators aren't expected to offer any conclusions.

The plane carrying 144 passengers was out of contact with anyone on the ground for 77 minutes as it flew across a broad swath of the country on Oct. 21, raising national security concerns.

No one here, right

Maybe they were playing Tetris.

[john]

I doubt they were on this site

[will]

This is worthy of the Onion.

[bizarro]

Wonder what they'll think of the new Dreamliner......

[will]

Dec 16, 2009 15:28:43 GMT -5 @bizarro said:

Wonder what they'll think of the new Dreamliner......

They seem to have liked the old one well enough to use it for 77 minutes or so.

[arozanski]

An older article:

Pilots miss airport by 150 miles — but how?

By JOAN LOWY Associated Press

Saturday, October 24, 2009

WASHINGTON — By radio, data message and cell phone, air traffic controllers and pilots tried for more than an hour to contact the crew of a Northwest Airlines jetliner as it sped 150 miles past its Minneapolis destination and military jets readied to chase it. The pilots were finally alerted to their stunning gaffe when a flight attendant called on an intercom from the cabin.

Federal investigators are struggling to determine the reason for Wednesday’s wayward flight, which raised terrorism fears enough that even after contact was re-established, air traffic controllers asked the crew to prove who they were by executing turns.

The pilots said they had been having a heated discussion about airline policy. But it’s easier for aviation safety experts and other pilots to believe that the pair simply fell asleep somewhere along their route from San Diego.

“It certainly is a plausible explanation,” said Bill Voss, president of the Flight Safety Foundation in Alexandria, Va.

One of the two pilots, first officer Richard I. Cole, said that wasn’t the case. He also said an argument wasn’t to blame.

“All I’m saying is we were not asleep; we were not having a fight; there was nothing serious going on in the cockpit that would threaten the people in the back at all,” he told The Associated Press in an interview at his home in Salem, Ore.

He declined to discuss what exactly happened but did insist “it was not a serious event, from a safety issue.”

“I can’t go into it, but it was innocuous.”

New recorders retain as much as two hours of cockpit conversation and other noise, but the older model aboard Northwest’s Flight 188 includes just the last 30 minutes — only the very end of Wednesday night’s flight after the pilots realized their error over Wisconsin and were heading back to Minneapolis.

Post-9/11 reality

They had flown through the night with no response as air traffic controllers in two states and pilots of other planes over a wide swath of the mid-continent tried to get their attention by radio, data message and cell phone. On the ground, concerned officials alerted National Guard jets to go after the airliner from two locations, though none of the military planes got off the runway.

“Controllers have a heightened sense of vigilance when we’re not able to talk to an aircraft. That’s the reality post-9/11,” said Doug Church, a spokesman for the National Air Traffic Controllers Association.

A report released by airport police Friday identified Cole, of Salem, Ore., and the flight’s captain, Timothy B. Cheney, of Gig Harbor, Wash. The report said the men were “cooperative, apologetic and appreciative” and volunteered to take preliminary breath tests that were zero for alcohol use. The report also said the lead flight attendant told police she was unaware of any incident during the flight.

The pilots, both temporarily suspended, are to be interviewed by NTSB investigators this week. The airline, acquired last year by Delta Air Lines, is also investigating. Messages left at both men’s homes were not immediately returned.

The FAA said Friday letters had been sent informing the pilots they are being investigated by the agency and it is possible their pilot’s licenses could be suspended or revoked.

Investigators don’t know whether the pilots may have fallen asleep, but National Transportation Safety Board spokesman Keith Holloway said Friday that fatigue and cockpit distraction will be looked into. The plane’s flight recorders were brought to the board’s Washington headquarters.

Voss, the Flight Safety Foundation president, said a special concern was that the many safety checks built into the aviation system to prevent incidents like this one — or to correct them quickly — apparently were ineffective until the very end. Not only couldn’t air traffic controllers and other pilots raise the Northwest pilots for an hour, but the airline’s dispatcher should have been trying to reach them as well. The three flight attendants onboard should have questioned why there were no preparations for landing being made. Brightly lit cockpit displays should have warned the pilots it was time to land. Despite cloudy conditions, the lights of Minneapolis should have clued them in that they’d reached their destination, aviation experts said.

“It’s probably something you would say never would happen if this hadn’t just happened,” Voss said.

The pilots were finally alerted to their situation when a flight attendant called on an intercom from the cabin. Two pilots flying in the vicinity were also finally able to raise the Northwest pilots using a Denver traffic control radio frequency instead of the local Minneapolis frequency.

On the ground, police and FBI agents prepared for the worst.

“When the aircraft taxied to the gate I was able to see the two white males in the seats of the flight crew, both were wearing uniforms consistent with Delta flight crew,” said a police report, signed by an Officer Starch. “When the aircraft had stopped, the male seated in the pilot seat turned, looked at me and gave me two thumbs up and shook his head indicating all was OK.”

Passengers not told

Air traffic controllers in Denver had been in contact with the pilots as they flew over the Rockies, FAA spokeswoman Laura Brown said. But as the plane got closer to Minneapolis, she said, “the Denver center tried to contact the flight but couldn’t get anyone.”

Denver controllers notified their counterparts in Minneapolis, who also tried to reach the crew without success, Brown said.

Officials suspect Flight 188’s radio might still have been tuned to a frequency used by Denver controllers even though the plane had flown beyond their reach, said Church, the spokesman for the National Air Traffic Controllers Union. Controllers worked throughout the incident with the pilots of other planes, asking them to try to raise Flight 188 using the Denver frequency, he said.

Delta said Friday it plans to give flight vouchers worth a few hundred dollars to each of the passengers.

Passenger Lonnie Heidtke said he didn’t notice anything unusual before the landing except that the plane was late.

The flight attendants “did say there was a delay and we’d have to orbit or something to that effect before we got back. They really didn’t say we overflew Minneapolis. ... They implied it was just a business-as-usual delay,” said Heidtke, a consultant with a supercomputer consulting company based in Bloomington, Minn.

Once on the ground, the plane was met by police and FBI agents. Passengers retrieving their luggage from overhead bins were asked by flight attendants to sit down, Heidtke said. An airport police officer and a couple other people came on board and stood at the cockpit door, talking to the pilots, he said.

“I did jokingly call my wife and say, ‘This is the first time I’ve seen the police meet the plane, Maybe they’re going to arrest the pilots for being so late,’ ” Heidtke said, adding: “Maybe I was right.”

www.reporternews.com/news/2009/oct/24/pilots-miss-airport-by-150-miles-8212-but-how/?print=1

[baldheadeddork]

Dec 16, 2009 11:17:07 GMT -5 arozanski said:

Pilots described being caught totally by surprise
Wayward plane's pilots described being caught totally by surprise after missing Minneapolis
ap
By Joan Lowy, Associated Press Writer , On Wednesday December 16, 2009, 10:46 am

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The pilots of the Northwest Airlines plane that overshot Minneapolis described to safety investigators being caught completely by surprise when a flight attendant called them to ask when the plane would be landing.

According to interviews and other documents released Wednesday by the National Transportation Safety Board, the captain of Flight 188 said he looked up from his laptop to discover there was no longer any flight information programmed into the Airbus A320's computer. He said his navigation system showed Duluth, Minnesota, off to his left and Eau Claire, Wisconsin, ahead on the right.

The plane carrying 144 passengers had been out of radio contact for 77 minutes as it flew across a broad swath of the country on Oct. 21, raising national security concerns.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Federal safety officials say they will release information gathered in their investigation of the Northwest Airlines plane that flew more than 100 miles past Minneapolis while pilots worked on their laptops.

The National Transportation Safety Board says it will make public on Wednesday about 400 pages of interviews with Flight 188's pilots and flight attendants, as well as air traffic controllers, among other information.

Since the board's investigation is continuing, investigators aren't expected to offer any conclusions.

The plane carrying 144 passengers was out of contact with anyone on the ground for 77 minutes as it flew across a broad swath of the country on Oct. 21, raising national security concerns.

No one here, right

Maybe they were playing Tetris.

The pilots are going to get hung out to dry for using their laptops for non-flight related work, but their explanations are believable and the ATC's screwed up just as badly.

The pilots said they were trying to sort out their work schedules, which are available from the airline website in a downloadable format. Crew scheduling is known as "Screw Scheduling" when everything is going well, and going well is about a million miles from what's happening as Northwest and Delta are merging. It's a huge mess and pilots have to review their schedules with a fine tooth comb to make sure they're not being booked for hours they can't fly or on legs that are impossible to make connections. There's also a lot of infighting as pilots who used to have a lot of seniority in the Northwest system (and with it the ability to pick their schedules) are folded into Delta at a lower rank.

Another one of Dork's dissertations below:

The work rules for an airline pilot seem ridiculously easy on the surface. You can't fly more than eight hours in any 24 hour day and you can't fly more than 100 hours in a month. Easy money, right? Not so fast. Hours are only counted when the plane is moving under the control of the pilots. A typical day for a domestic pilot is four or five flights of two hours or less, with an hour between each leg and an hour preflight and at least a half hour to get through security and to the plane at the start of your day. If you live very close to the airport where your day begins and all of your flights connect one to the other, you're looking at at least twelve hours before you walk away from the plane at the end of the day.

That's the absolute best case scenario. Much more common is that your day will start at an airport hundreds of miles away, so you have to go to your local airport and get a jumpseat ride to wherever your day begins. Your first flight will be at around noon and you'll fly three or four legs before finishing the day at eleven o'clock in BFE. Your flying clock stopped running the moment you shut down the engines at the gate, and the regs also say you have to have at least nine hours of consecutive downtime in every 24 hours. It will be an hour or more before you get to a hotel, and you probably want to eat dinner some time and unwind a little, but the airlines try to get you back into the air the moment the nine hour window closes and again, that clock starts running when the engines start. Getting to the airport and all of the preflight doesn't count as hours working. So you shut down at eleven, finish closing up the airplane and get to the hotel by midnight, order a pizza and watch some TV, but you have to get up at five-thirty to be at the airport by six-thirty for your first flight that is scheduled to take off at eight. You fly two or three more legs until you have your eight hours of flying time in 24 and probably finish your day hundreds of miles from home. It can easily take over 36 hours from the time you park at the airport until you get in your car to drive home, and as far as God, the FAA and your airline are concerned you've only worked eight hours.

Multiply that one day by twelve or thirteen to get a month. This is why pilots pick through crew scheduling, and do everything they can to minimize the time between flights and get the start and finish legs close to their base airport. Pilots with seniority get priority on choosing their schedules but that's going to be FUBAR'ed when your combining two major carriers like Northwest and Delta. They shouldn't have been doing it while they were flying, but I'm not surprised at all that they got so consumed with figuring out their schedules once they did open the laptops - or that it sounded like they were fighting.

(It also doesn't help that the Airbus A320 has the control stick on the side and a pull-out table designed in part for pilots to use a laptop in the cockpit.)

When this story broke one of the things I wondered is why didn't they hear the controllers trying to raise them? The answer was - they couldn't hear what wasn't said. They were passed off from one controller to another for well over a thousand miles without anyone ever contacting the plane. ATC has the flight plan showing the intended destination (although I don't believe this information is shown on the radar screen) and the last traffic control center who had the plane was in Winnipeg, Alberta. That alone should have raised some alarms among the controllers because the plane was on a path that didn't make any sense for a Northwest flight.